1 A revelation of Jesus Christ, that God gave to him, to shew to his servants what things it behoveth to come to pass quickly; and he did signify [it], having sent through his messenger to his servant John,2 who did testify the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ, as many things also as he did see.3 Happy is he who is reading, and those hearing, the words of the prophecy, and keeping the things written in it -- for the time is nigh!4 John to the seven assemblies that [are] in Asia: Grace to you, and peace, from Him who is, and who was, and who is coming, and from the Seven Spirits that are before His throne,5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first-born out of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth; to him who did love us, and did bathe us from our sins in his blood,6 and did make us kings and priests to his God and Father, to him [is] the glory and the power to the ages of the ages! Amen.

1 Grammar: The first two verses are a long noun phrase, the full title of the work.It consists of a simple noun phrase, the short title, and then a string of interconnected relative clauses. Since tp doesn’t have relative clauses, these turn out to be a string of sentences held together by cross-references.But first is the noun, so ‘o’ is inappropriate, since it marks the beginning of a wish or command, thus a sentence (there are also no wishes or commands here, yet). To be sure “this is …” is appropriate, but is simple declarative. So, ‘(ni li) a revelation of Jesus Christ’. The “of” is ambiguous, as bad as the ‘pi’ (and the Greek genitive).2 Vocabulary. ‘sitelen sewi’ “holy writing, Scripture” is ok (except that the author wouldn’t have the concept of scripture yet), but not very specific: this is Law or Prophets or Gospel, but a different type: revelation. There are several metaphors for revelation, but this one seems to be about seeing, so something about showing something to someone. That is some noun version of ‘kama e ni: x li lukin e y’, most simply ‘kama lukin’. “Jesus Christ” gets tpized regularly as ‘Jesu Kulisa’ (and “Christ” is already at the end of the first century CE practically a part of the name, not explained as “the anointed one” or so and certainly not as “who saves people”). So just ‘(ni li) kama lukin pi Jesu Kulisa’

Grammar: First relative clause "which (i.e., the revelation) God gave to him (i.e., Jesus) " now a purpose clause "to show his servants things" and a relative clause "which must happen soon". Then an apparent break back to “He gave…” “He certified it by sending it through his messenger to John”, which breaks down into “He certified it in this way: He sent ..” This is a lot of uses of ‘e ni:’, alas.‘jan sewi li pana e sitelen sewi ni tawa jan Jesu’ fine, but could probably get by with just ‘ni’ for teh revelation and and ‘ona’ for Jesus. Also, ‘sewi’ is usually enough for “God”; ‘jan’ introduces a range of problems.‘jan sewi Jawe li pana e ni tan lukin e ijo pi tenpo-kama poka tawa e jan-pali mute.’ The identification of the text is not conditional, nor is this a consequent of it, so ‘la’ has no role. Again, ‘jan’ is unnecessary with ‘sewi’ in these cases and ‘Jawe’ is majorly wrong, since NT shies away from even getting close to that notion (and is even a little uncomfortable with “God”). But there seems to be a line missing here, “to Jesus for the purpose of showing to his servants what must soon happen” or rather this has somehow collapsed to “because…” . But that needs a new sentence and, further, it is “for purpose” not “from cause” and “show (cause to see)” not “see”. While ‘poka’ is not (yet) standard in time phrases, this works ok, though it omits “must happen, which tends to be important in prophecies. As written ‘jan pali mute’”many workmen” is a second direct object of ‘lukin’ though probably meant to be an indirect object (‘tawa’) of ‘kama lukin’, those to whom these are shown, or, depending on how it is spelled out, even the subject of a buried ‘lukin’. ‘li sona e ijo kama tawa jan anpa’ but this is about the purpose of God’s action and not a parallel to them, not “he gives and also knows” but “he gives so that they may know”, so even the subject of ‘sona’ is ‘jan anpa ona’ if you want to do it that way -- but notice it is more indirect “to show them” (although, as a result, they will know); this is a book about showing after all. And, of course, it is just not clear who all those “he”s are, Jesus or God. Happily, using ‘ona’ manages to preserve the uncertainty.

Some vocabulary already in the last part. Here just sorting out ‘jan pali’ “workers” and ‘jan anpa’ “servants”, the latter carrying the notion of humbleness (and Islamic submission). ‘Jojone’ is hard to figure; the Greek is ‘Ioannes’, three syllables, so we need a consonant between /o/ and /a/. Apparently, the author picked /j/, a possibility but usually used after /e/ and /i/, rather than the other usual possibility, /w/, usually used after /o/ and /u/. (In this case, /k/ is an outside possibility, since behind that ‘Ioannes’ is an Aramaic ‘Iochanan’ or some such thing). Still, /w/ is standard and opens the choice of ‘Jowane’ or ‘Jowan’, with a slight preference for the latter. ‘Jon/Jan/Son/San’ are English and so not really appropriate here.

‘jan sewi Jawe li pana e ni tan lukin e ijo pi tenpo-kama poka tawa e jan-pali mute. jan Jesu li pana e jan-walo sewi tan lukin e ni tawa jan Jon.’ “Jehovah gave this because” and then something missing then “saw things of the near future” then something about moving many workers -- presumably, the ‘e’ is an error, and it is just ”to many workers”, somehow connected to ‘lukin’, as the people who will be shown,, however that is spelled out. “Jesus sent an angel (I suppose ‘waso’, not ‘walo’, though “white “ might fit as well, since not all angels have wings, but most seem to be white). of God because” Then something missing and “saw this to John”. But, of course, “angel” just is “messenger” without any special physical form, so ‘jan toki’ or ‘jan pana toki’ “So that” or “in order to” rather than “because” in each case. So, first of all, God gave the revelation to Jesus, for the purpose of showing to his (God’s or Jesus’) servants what *must* happen soon. He (Jesus or God) gave it to an angel to take to John. So, ‘tawa Jon’ goes with ‘pana’ and so needs to be placed carefully with respect to the stuff about angels.

Verse three is an ad: accept this and you will be happy. The appiness is stressed in the original, put at the front, with those who will be happy put after. Tp doesn’t allow inversions like this, so some way of getting the subjects -- which involve relative clauses -- to the front is needed. The solution: “if you are one of these then you will be happy (or blessed -- same word). The relative clauses now just become the core of the antecedent:‘Jan li toki e toki sewi li kute e toki sewi li awen e ni la ona li kama pona tan ni: tenpo sewi kama’The first two predicates could be collapsed (as in the original) to ‘li lukin (“read”, not “say”, though the distinction is less clear back then than now) li kute, e (nimi pi) toki sewi li awen e ijo sitelen ni la ona li [happy] tan ni: tenpo li poka’ or so.‘jan li lukin-toki en jan li kute e ni, la ona li jo e ijo pona mute.tenpo li lili.’ (ignoring the ‘o’)The two first sentences can be collapsed here (and must be, since ‘en’ cannot appear between sentences) ‘jan li lukin toki (not bad for “read”) li kute, e ni [and adhere to its teachings…] la ona li [happy] [tan ni:] tenpo li lili. Right idea, maybe not quite same structure.So, how to say “happy” here (with “blessed” always in the background): ‘pilin pona’ or ‘pona pilin’ don’t see right, since this is pretty clearly not about feelings but about one’s actual state. So, just ‘pona’ or ‘pona lon’ seems better. The ‘kama’, change of state, position seems wrong, since this is the state they are in as “have good things” also points out. “The time is nigh” suggests the use of ‘poka’, otherwise questionable with tenpo’. But “time is short” also suggest brevitry but doesn’t look to what is to come. On the other hand ‘tenpo sewi li kama’ looks to what is to come but doesn’t say it is at hand.